CINEMA: Stanley Peskin=20
THE title of Tim Burton’s Ed Wood, which is about the real- life film-maker Edward D Wood Jr, is perhaps a play on the=20 word Hollywood (a name we see emblazoned more than once on=20 the famous Beverly Hill) as well as a reference to his own=20 Edward Scissorhands (1990) which, like Ed Wood, starred=20 Johnny Depp. Not only is there a phonetic resemblance, but=20 there is also the suggestion of montage or cutting, an=20 essential component of film-making.=20
Burton’s film concentrates on Wood’s career in the 1950s, a=20 time when Wood worked with the great Bela Lugosi who played=20 Dracula (superbly recreated by Martin Landau who won the=20 Oscar for Best Supporting Actor) in Tod Browning’s 1931=20 film. It is Wood’s dream to resurrect Lugosi and=20 incorporate him into stories which emanate from a mind=20 obsessed with fantasies of horror and cross-dressing.=20
The seminal films for Ed Wood, apart from Wood’s own films,=20 are Dracula and Citizen Kane (1941) and the chief=20 influences on the infamous director are Lugosi (believed by=20 everyone in the film to be dead) and Orson Welles who, like=20 Wood after him, not only directed but wrote many of the=20 screenplays he filmed. There are several shots of Wood=20 mouthing the words his actors speak: he believes it all.=20 For Wood, as for Welles, film is a “Ribbon of dreams” and=20 Hollywood is a Haunted House: Manderley in Rebecca, Xanadu=20 in Citizen Kane.=20
Burton shows a meeting between Wood and Welles (Vincent=20 D’Onofrio), probably apocryphal. Welles is depressed=20 because he cannot find the backing to make Don Quixote=20 (nicely apt in this context) and must settle for a=20 commercial film produced by Universal (the home of Dracula=20 and Frankenstein) with Charlton Heston playing a Mexican.=20 Called Touch of Evil (1958), Welles’ film is, in fact, a=20
The credit sequence of Burton’s Ed Wood is set during an=20 exaggerated thunder and lightning storm which has a=20 wonderfully Gothic atmosphere. There are swooningly elegant=20 tracking shots of a castle, a graveyard and a swamp with a=20 giant octopus beneath the surface. The images are inspired=20 by Wood’s own films and as in Plan 9 from Outer Space=20 (1958), the actors’ names are inscribed on tombstones. But=20 all the trademarks of an Ed Wood film go beyond mere=20 pastiche to suggest Burton’s homage to the man and the=20 films he made, as well as to the art of film-making and the=20 voyeuristic pleasure we take in them.=20
Burton has no illusions about the true nature of Hollywood.=20 In many ways it is parasitic, a jungle, crass and=20 meretricious. When Lugosi as Dracula speaks lines that he=20 knows by heart, he is describing both Transylvania and=20 Hollwood: “Home. I have no home. Hunted. Despised. Living=20 like an animal. The jungle is my home.” =20
In the film, Lugosi lives in a bungalow whose exterior=20 could not be more depressing than it is in its uniformity.=20 But the interior is taken straight from The Old Dark House=20 with its gauze curtains, candles, and closed spaces. There=20 are many coffin scenes which recall Lugosi as Dracula=20 rising from his coffin in Tod Browning’s Dracula, and the=20 scene in which the coffin lid closes on the dead Lugosi is=20 most moving.=20
Depp, who specialises in eccentric roles, is an engaging=20 Wood. Pointed metal shards for hands are replaced by Angora=20 sweaters and women’s underwear. In 1953, Wood made a film=20 called Glen or Glenda, as well as Bride of the Monster,=20 perhaps in tribute to James Whale’s great film Bride of=20 Frankenstein (1935).=20
Burton undoubtedly has a keen awareness of the incongruous=20 and eccentric. Apart from Citizen Kane and Dracula, there=20 are posters of Desire and Pin-Down Girl (in the office of a=20 producer who makes “crap exploitation” movies), and a queen=20 called Bunny Breckinridge who wants a sex-change (shades=20 perhaps of Gore Vidal and his Myra/Myron) who carefully=20 tests the water before he is baptised. =20
Criswell announces the film: “Greetings my friends. Let me=20 reveal to you the secret testimonies of souls who served=20 this miserable world.” What Burton offers us is a first- rate version of science-fiction/horror second features.=20